Tuesday Poem: Guest Editor on The Tuesday Poem Hub

Today I am the guest editor on the Tuesday Poem Hub, which is the beating, driving heart of the Tuesday Poem community!

For that reason, I am not posting a poem here today, but inviting you to visit the Hub, where I have selected Rhian Gallagher’sButterfly, a contemporary villanelle, as this week’s guest poem. Butterfly is included in Rhian’s second collection, Shift, which is forthcoming from Auckland University Press.

Oh, a villanelle is traditionally nineteen lines: 5 tercets ending with a quatrain. The first and third lines of the first tercet (i.e. the ‘refrain’) then alternate to form the final (third) line of the subsequent four tercets, and the final couplet of the quatrain. it used to be that the refrain lines were repeated verbatim, but the contemporary trend is to vary them slightly.

Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” with the refrain lines “Do not go gentle into that good night//rage, rage against the dying of the light” is generally regarded as a very strong example of the villanelle form.

Oh yes, and a villanelle is worked on two end rhymes throughout—that’s important, too.

"THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world."--Robin Hobb

Thornspell

Jacket art by Antonio Javier Caparo

Thornspell is my first novel and is published by Knopf (Random House Children's Books, USA). It won the Sir Julius Vogel Award 2009 for Best Novel: Young Adult and was a Storylines Childrens' Literature Trust Notable Book 2009.